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In boosting your health, the notion of emotions being a instigator in any portion of your health has been a heated debate in the medical communirety since the start of time. Can feelings cause disease? ….and if they can, will relieving the emotion, cause remission of this disease process?

Eastern Medicine Areas

In Chinese Medicine and other Eastern medicine areas, feelings have been held to be cause of disease in the body. According to traditional Chinese Medicine the emotions when suddenly and greatly exaggerated, such as at a trauma of some type, will direct the body to be out of balance and this contributes to disharmony between the Ying and the Yang, which is a necessity for normal physiological activity.

The extremes of emotions in Chinese medicine cause illness in the flow of Qi. Extreme anger damages the liver, excessive terror damages the kidneys, etc and so forth. Each emotion is tied directly to systems and organs in the body. In this form of thought, the regulation of emotions is suggested to maintain good health. However, in Western medicine, that was a heated argument.

In the past twenty years the brain-emotion link has started coming to the forefront in little increments in Western medicine. With the introduction of new technologies such as MRIs, CTs, FMRI, PET scans, etc., the ‘science’ behind the psychological connection is presently being imaged and physiologists and biochemical scientists are now able to visually see brain activity when emotions are triggered, which then reveal visual pathways into where symptoms occur in the body.

Energy Psychology

With this exciting imaging and work done by some doctors a new exciting field started. This was a brand new exciting development of a new area of study like neuroimmunomodulation that was created to comprehend the connections between emotions and disease. In the late 1980s, molecular scientists found evidence that the body does speak to one another and that emotions do activate those responses. This scientific evidence became what neuroimmunomodulation experts have used to supply the scientific foundation for understanding how emotions can influence the onset, course, and remission of illness.

They revealed a broader acceptance of the new emerging discipline and shortly scientific conventions with subsequent published material which validate this belief in the scientific community which disease and emotions are intertwined.

During this time period above, the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, another area came into being. This was the development of “energy psychology” This started in the late 1980’s by a clinical psychologist, Dr. Roger Callahan, who through exploring ways to help his customers with phobias and psychological trauma, came upon approaches to clear these and cure his customers by tapping sets of points on particular pathways, which are energy conduits from the body. Despite the fact that those ‘meridians’ are treated as a fact by the Chinese, in Western medicine, they weren’t widely accepted and Dr. Callahan’s work was largely dismissed by mainstream medicine.

During this time period, Dr. Callahan developed a set of algorithms (a set group of purpose to tap ), and created his approaches called Thought Field Therapy (TFT). He instructed to whomever he could and soon a guy named Gary Craig came to him and learned his strategy. He took these algorithms and soon developed a pair of tapping points himself to simplify this and create an overall tapping algorithm which everyone could use. This soon developed into a method named Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT).

Other techniques like Environmental Stress Management (ESM) were also teaching the exact sorts of tapping algorithms to enhance systems and organs in the human body and energy psychology took its position in holistic medicine as a valuable tool. Clinical trials have contributed these climbing energy psychology techniques clinical importance and prevalence.

As written in journals about the South American trial,”Despite its odd-seeming processes and eye-raising claims, evidence is accumulating that energy-based psychotherapy, which involves stimulating acupuncture points or alternative energy systems while attracting troubling feelings or situations to mind, is more effective in treating anxiety disorders than the current standard of care, which uses a combination of medication and cognitive behavior therapy.”

So, what does all this information mean to you? How does this affect the general public and how doctors generally are treating patients?

Since these trials and new found techniques have arrived on the scene, and the new discovered science which verifies some of the related claims, a new dialog of how emotions affect health has opened up. Stress, and its large selection of emotions, is becoming widely recognized as one of the ways that emotions do affect disease processes and health. The public is becoming more and more aware of how stress is impacting their health and ways to release stress have blossomed, creating dialogue and consciousness.

Physicians, in reaction to this, are becoming more aware themselves, and more amenable to the notion that emotions are influencing the health of their patients. As an energy trainer who works with the energy-based psychology methods, it has also opened up my clinic to joint ventures with such open-minded doctors in bettering the health of all involved. However, the doors are slow to start largely because the general public remains unaware of how this works or how it would benefit them. So, here are a few examples to allow discussion of these talks within the physician population, in addition to the general public.

Depression Issues

Let’s take a look at a really major problem in society, that of depression. It’s widely recognized that depression is a psychological disease with the possibilities of chemical imbalances within the brain. There’s still much research to be done on what the causes are, but all are in accordance with the fact that psychological stress is a massive part of it. The methods of choice to “keeping” depression in this time are drugs, a couple of diet alterations, and stress control. So, let us take a look at how an energy-based psychology technique could be helpful in this circumstance.

Depression, to an energy coach, is a build up, like layers of an onion, of psychological distress or injury. Every man or woman differs in how this psychological stress expresses itself in the body. When this load of psychological distress becomes too much, the body begins to shut down. The organs stop to actually operate optimally, as the emotions directly affect them, as is revealed in Chinese Medicine. This puts pressure on your adrenals, liver, stomach, and colon, just to mention a few. Perhaps some nausea or constipation starts as these organs are affected. Fatty livers grow, adrenal dysfunction, etc..

The amygdala in the brain, your fight or flight reaction, becomes stressed and remains in stress mode, which then causes stress reactions in the body like hypertension and gastrointestinal reflux. Pretty soon, stress reactions take over and the individual just gives in, feeling ill, not working properly, and just overall unable to manage the emotions that trigger continuously in their life from each the past traumas.

So, to help in this scenario using energy-based technology, we start, initially. We return to the origins of where this started. This may be accomplished by kinetic testing first traumas, or creating good techniques of detective work in finding out what the individual can remember about their childhood. If the individual can remember traumatic psychological memories from their youth, you can almost bet that’s involved from the original beginnings of this disease process.

Emotions Implications

Then we find out what emotions are in fact involved. Is the individual feeling anger, fear, sadness, despair, burdened, etc, with that initial injury. The feelings of being in control in some part of the life is usually involved, as that is a big trigger for anxiety. Being helpless is another emotion that’s typically triggered with depression. The man or woman is simply too exhausted, too worn, too burdened, and too helpless to continue.

Once identifying the emotions involved, teaching methods like acupressure tapping is educated, retraining the mind to take back control in the individual’s life. The procedure is one where you tap as you speak about issues you’ve got and identify the issue, ask your body to clean it out, and then tap in strong notions of peace, calm, power, and taking back power in your life. This is a mental process that the mind/body identifies and corrects. The ideas and emotions in this procedure also cause an extremely physical release, that if utilizing the terrific new technologies mentioned previously, may be monitored in the body.

Other problems in regard to depression can be feelings like feeling stuck, not living up to what you think you should do, a dead-end job, or psychological issues dealing with communication. Problems like these can be addressed using emotional acupressure, but are tough to address in a physician-based strategy. However, all these emotions are linked to disease, as they create deeper emotions like those mentioned above, and do affect physical responses in the body.

In other cases where disease processes have started, emotions can be cleared in regard to organs to assist in the process of recovery, in addition to tap out the emotions that come from having a disease process, like the hopelessness or insecurity, etc.. Handling the original trauma also enables the body to release the emotion directly accountable, which when discharged frees the body to cure.

This is just the start of how both disciplines can be wed to make healing as an entire person. The body and mind are entwined. The old expression of “what you consider the majority of the time, you’re,” is very true in this respect. It’s a terrific thing to make discussion. The first step in change is bringing awareness to a problem and educating yourself and then others. It’s a tool that could EMPOWER your life and make health if you allow it to. Empowerment is the key. Use it wisely.